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The Louisiana State Penitentiary, previously a plantation, is currently the largest maximum-security prison in the United States. It has long been known as Angola, after the country from which many of the plantation’s slaves first came. Now, over three-quarters of this prison’s population is African-American. New Orleans-based husband-and-wife activists and photographers, Keith Calhoun and Chandra McCormick, have spent decades at Angola, documenting the harrowing existence of these inmates. Slavery, the Prison Industrial Complex, on view at Art + Practice in Leimert Park, surveys their work.

Keith Calhoun, Who’s that man on that horse? I don’t know his name but they call him Boss, 1981. Courtesy of the artist.

Keith Calhoun, Who’s that man on that horse? I don’t know his name but they call him Boss, 1981. Courtesy of the artist.

The Louisiana State Penitentiary, previously a plantation, is currently the largest maximum-security prison in the United States. It has long been known as Angola, after the country from which many of the plantation’s slaves first came. Now, over three-quarters of this prison’s population is African-American. New Orleans-based husband-and-wife activists and photographers, Keith Calhoun and Chandra McCormick, have spent decades at Angola, documenting the harrowing existence of these inmates. Slavery, the Prison Industrial Complex, on view at Art + Practice in Leimert Park, surveys their work.